FEATURE ARTICLES

Authorising Engineers (Decontamination), a group of highly skilled individuals acknowledged as lacking an effective representative professional body over the past decade by Graham Stanton, the chairman of a new IHEEM Decontamination Technical Platform (DTP) established recently to promote their professional interests, have much both to contribute to, and to gain from, the new Platform, he, and the body’s secretary, Brian Kirk, explained to HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie at a recent meeting in London.

Addressing a 220-strong audience at London’s Barts Hospital at the launch of a new NHS Sustainable Development Unit (NHS SDU) publication, Route Map for Sustainable Health, senior NHS and NHS SDU speakers highlighted the magnitude of the challenge faced by the service over the next 5-40 years in meeting its carbon reduction targets, and set out how the new “Route Map” could provide important pointers to help all in the healthcare arena operate more sustainably in the broadest sense.

Once viewed almost exclusively as temporary facilities built down to a cost, especially by the architectural community, modular off-site built healthcare buildings have enjoyed increasing success in recent years, as perceptions about their quality, and recognition of their advantages over “traditional” on-site constructed buildings,

The St Helens & Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust says it has reached a significant milestone in a major project via which it aims to cease completely using paper-based patient records and other patientrelated information such as discharge summaries and X-ray results by converting all such documentation to online electronic form.

The first of a series of 15 dementia care homes planned to open across southern and southwestern England over the next five years by Archstone Lifestyle Care, a new sister company to builder of luxury homes for older people Archstone Lifestyle Homes, was officially opened late last year at Verwood in Dorset in an attractive, leafy location on the edge of the New Forest.

Darren Ling, a director of ventilation and kitchen extract duct cleaning specialist System Hygienics, explains why pre-commission cleaning is essential to combating the risk of healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs).

With the Carbon Reduction Commitment now fully in force, and the NHS tasked with achieving tough carbon emission reduction targets in line with both UK and EU mandates, healthcare estates teams across the country are seeking cost-effective ways to reduce energy consumption.

At a time when, with less capital funding available for purchasing high value hospital equipment, NHS board-level and financial personnel may be tempted to sign off purchase of equipment that:

Over 400 guests, including senior representatives from estates and facilities teams, healthcare planning companies, healthcare providers, architects, contractors, and product suppliers, attended the recent 12th annual Building Better Healthcare Awards in London.

How hospitals and other healthcare facilities can cost-effectively and efficiently deal with the sizeable quantities of clinical and other waste generated by their day-today activities, while meeting their statutory obligations, and keeping “on the right side” of regulatory and enforcement bodies such as the Environment Agency,

Giving his presentation as one of three speakers in a Architects for Health (AfH)-led session addressing the broader topic of “How to achieve excellence in an age of austerity” at last October’s Healthcare Estates conference, Mungo Smith, a founding director and design lead at leading UK healthcare architects MAAP, discussed a booklet he recently co-authored with Andy Black, chair of international healthcare strategic consultancy Durrow, and Johannes Eggen, a partner at NSW Architects and Planners in Oslo.

Healthcare facilities use nearly twice as much energy per square foot as office buildings, according to American HVAC and air handling equipment manufacturer Temtrol (citing statistics from the country’s Green Building Council).

A high-level initiative involving all 36 UK engineering institutes aimed at “ensuring the health of all areas of education and training that bear on the formation and progress of engineers” has now been under way for nearly 18 months.

In a presentation given at a recent IHEEM seminar, “Total water management within healthcare premises”, held at London’s Royal Society of Arts, David Harper, one of the UK’s leading independent experts in Legionella,

In an article based on the “Best Paper” at the Institute of Hospital Engineering Australia’s (IHEA) 61st National Conference 2010, Dr Liz Haywood, PhD, MIHEA, Chris Frankel, and Andrew Johns, BTech, MIHEA – BMS group, Bendigo Health Building and Infrastructure Division, examine the group’s part in a project involving the design, build, installation, and commissioning, of two new negative pressure suites at Bendigo Health in Victoria.

A new integrated 289-bed hospital complex in San Francisco, the first phase of which is set for completion in 2014, will embrace a wide range of sustainable technologies and principles, with the key to the design being early involvement with, and buy-in from, all parties involved, to, a projectspecific “sustainability plan”.

IHEEM London branch chairman John Crawford retired from full-time employment recently after 49 years, almost to the day, as an electrical engineer, having worked for organisations ranging from a sizeable London regional health authority to London Regional Transport.

Manufacturer and supplier of LED theatre lights, HD camera systems, video integration technologies, and ceiling support units, Trumpf Medical Systems UK, and “logistical services” company Canute International Medical Services (CIMS), one of whose specialities is providing mobile medical units for diagnostic imaging, have entered into a partnership that will see the two companies offer fully fitted out modular operating theatres and other medical/clinical buildings incorporating the latest technology and equipment, on a fully project-managed, “turnkey” basis.

Damon High, a consultant at international testing, certification, qualification, training, and consultancy services provider TÜV Product Service, examines the issue of electromagnetic interference in hospitals, highlighting the areas that equipment suppliers and estates and facilities managers/healthcare engineers need to consider to ensure both the continuing safe, reliable operation of equipment, and compliance with the latest legislation.

Examining the effectiveness of various wet surface cleaning methods in combating harmful microorganisms in a hospital ward, understanding different healthcare cleaning regimes’ impact on reducing slips and trips, evaluating the protection offered by surgical masks against influenza bioaerosols, and independently testing tower crane safety following a number of fatal incidents, are among the broad spectrum of recent projects undertaken by the Buxton-headquartered Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL).